Archive
Newsletter Archive
August 6, 2022
Judge not... unless you are a judge?
Hello again, Reader.
I've been busy this week with some very exciting work! I'm fortunate enough to be a judge for this wjkite.com writing tournament, and entries have just closed. We had a record-breaking number of entries, and now the hard part (for us) begins.
I was also a judge last year, and was astounded at the quality of the entries we received. This year, if anything, the standard is even higher! I'm helping judge the ages 12-16 category, and narrowing it down to the long list is proving incredibly difficult. Some remarkable stories have got to be selected, and unfortunately that means that a lot of people will have to miss out. It feels unfair, because they're such good tales and you can just feel the love and effort that have been poured into them.
The theme was 'Unsung Heroes' and we have a fascinating variety of selections, including some I would never have expected to see. I can't wait for you to read them.
I'll be reading a few of my favourites out on YouTube shortly, as will the other judges, so I'll let you know when that happens. The long list is announced on 7th September, so the entrants still have a few weeks of nail-biting tension to endure.
Space News
Mars Express Peers Into Mars Grand Canyon
The largest canyon we know of is on Mars. Rather than via a river eroding its way through the landscape, this one was created by the planet's crust pulling apart.
To give you a sense of scale, the article notes:
Valles Marineris is almost ten times longer, 20 times wider and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon. As the largest canyon system in the Solar System, it would span the distance from the northern tip of Norway to the southern tip of Sicily.
And the ESA Mars Express orbiter has taken the highest resolution images of this feature we've ever seen. Do scroll through the article to see some remarkable imagery that really bring home the vast scale of this canyon.
Source: esa.int
Other Books To Check Out
I've gathered a few great books from independent authors like me, I hope you'll check them out.
And let me know if you have any books to recommend! I'm particularly interested in indie authors, but anything you've read and loved would be awesome.
(I'm repeating one from last time since I managed to put the wrong cover art in - apologies to the author Shane and all of you for the confusion).
UBL
Cover of 'The Resurrection Job' - a spacesuited figure strides away from a spacecraft.
Jason should know better than take an assassin job offer that's too good to be true...
Freelance assassin Jason "Key" Rokku earns a comfortable living as a reliable "Handyman" for the Vocational Guild VokGuild. The guild disguises their true nature by claiming to employ tradesmen-but this is just a front for a galaxy-wide group of Assassins and Mercenaries.
Key's new assignment won't be easy or clean-he's been tasked with killing the infamous Ricky Barbazzura.
Rules of Crane
Free
Cover of 'Rules of Crane' - a gravity defying paper crane on a knife edge.
Any direction can be down when gravity is broken.
How do you stop a dangerous outsider when the rules say you can't kill him?
Crane likes rules almost as much as she likes her knives. Rules give structure to her world. She can depend on rules to provide firm footing. Unlike, say, gravity.
Daughters of Men
Free
Cover of 'Daughter of Men' - a woman with a floral crown.
Forces stronger than hurricanes are at work in the Cape Fear.
For thirty-one years, Lila has hidden her extrasensory abilities, creating a small life in the same coastal North Carolina city where she was born. But her nightmares have grown worse, her angels still haven't learned Morse code, and raising a thirteen-year-old genius requires the kind of mental focus that Lila has never quite mastered. Still, the abnormal seems fairly normal-until a strange young man appears and a new friend confides a shocking truth about her pregnancy.
Beyond Imagination!
A wonderful collection of free SciFi books, absolutely spanning the spectrum from thriller to romance, and everything in between.
Check it out!
Strange News
Is the Thylacine really extinct?
Australia is full of marsupials, mammals with pouches, which have evolved to fill the niches taken by other types of animals around the world. One legendary one is the Thylacine, also known as the 'Tasmanian Wolf' (due to its resemblance to that creature) or 'Tasmanian Tiger' (due to the stripes on its hind quarters. It is not closely related to either, however. Officially the thylacine died out in 1936, after decades of hunting it to prevent it bothering local sheep. Unofficially, though, it might still be around. Sightings are reported regularly, often enough in fact that there are too many to simply ignore or write off as mistaken identity. Some have even come from naturalists who we might expect to know what they are looking at. Interestingly, computer modelling has also suggested that a population might have survived undetected until now. While there is no compelling evidence as of yet (and nothing short of capturing one would probably do the trick) there is good reason to go looking for them. And that's what the author of this article did.
Source: supernaturalmagazine.com
Miscellany
Loch Ness Monster 'Plausible'
That's such a clickbait headline, I feel obliged to point out that it's not my doing. Researches have found some plesiosaur fossils that would have come from creatures living in fresh water, rather than the oceans. From this, the article speculates that IF they still somehow survived, and IF no-one had ever noticed before, and IF one or more was living in Loch Ness then it's now TECHNICALLY possible. If I stretched that far I think I'd pull a muscle.
Source: telegraph.co.uk
Special effects artists create a fully automated 'social media influencer' from scratch, and things get a little weird...
Source: youtube.com
These drawers were full of bees
Another clickbait headline, but this one absolutely delivers. A wonderfully soft-spoken beekeeper narrates her recover of a swarm of bees from a chest of drawers.
Source: youtube.com
And Finally
Lola the cat had her annual checkup the other day, and the vet pronounced her in the very best of health. She has the body and teeth of a cat half her age, and certainly still seems to think she's a kitten. Though finding a dead sparrow under a chest of drawers this morning is one sign of her health and agility that I would have preferred not to have had to deal with. Fortunately we spotted it before it had been there too long, although we're not entirely sure when she brought it in. And disposing of it was much easier than the last one she 'presented' us with, which was still alive. Whether she thought it was dead or just wanted us to experience the joy of hunting for ourselves, I don't know, but convincing a terrified bird to fly out of the window is a lot harder than you might think!
I'll leave you with the sign outside our local charity shop, where they're clearly trying to appeal to my book addiction.
I'm off to watch Sandman on Netflix, which came out yesterday. If the previews and reviews are anything to go by, it's astounding. I own the glorious hardback collections of the original comics, and so I'm very excited to see how it translates to TV...
